The other Ni Made Jati


The other Ni Made Jati lived in Tabanan, where the Uluwatu factory was located.

Mixed in with my salvaged documents were a few strays I had never seen before. The first I ran across was dated 1992.


This reports certifies that Made Jati was "Never Married" in 1992. She reports being a resident in a separate kabupaten or county, city of Tabanan, and the purpose of this report was as a requirement "To arrange land purchase documents." The land was for what would later become Kori Restaurant in Kuta, which she claimed as a gift from her father to his unmarried daughter. In truth we had purchased the property from McHugh, and Made's father held it in his name just as Made had held McHugh's Uluwatu business in her name.


But she did not only live in Tabanan. Another certificate certifies that in 1994 she lives in the kabupaten Gianyar, village of Tulikup, and is "Never Married".


Then her official Resident Identity Card card in September 1994 puts her back as resident in Tabanan, but still "Never Married".


All these documents were technically illegal, and false Resident Identity Cards are illegal enough that jail sentences are sometimes handed out. The false statements also meant that properties were acquired under false pretenses, potentially voiding the property's legal status.

But if no harm done, it is unlikely that legal issues would come up.

Harm was done, however, and with full intent, because Made Jati used this Resident Identity Card to obtain the fraudulent Marriage Certificate in 1996. The reason I have this photocopy because she also submitted the card to the court in Denpasar in July 2005 as evidence in the Accusation of Divorce as of proof of the marriage in 1996. I had known about her Resident Identity Card in Sanur, so apparently she had at least two Resident Identity Cards from different kabupaten.


Not always clear...

Sometimes the dates and names and locations became so confusing that their import was not immediately apparent.

With this Resident Identity Card, at least a year after the conclusion of the Accusation of Divorce, Made Artini was looking again at the documents and—excellent memory—she recognized the dates.

Made Artini reminded me, and then I remembered that day because it had been unusually stressful. The card was issued 1 September 1994. Made was hugely pregnant with our second child and we were to fly to Singapore early the next morning. Suddenly Made insisted she need to take care of something important in Tabanan. She wouldn't say what, it didn't matter...just something to do with the government. I offered to drive her because I was worried about her health, but she absolutely refused and had her brother-in-law Made Kuendra take her.

The next day we flew to Singapore along with Made Artini, and 16 days later Brenden was born on 17 September 1994.

So what did all this mean? In May 1994—just four months earlier—we had held a Balinese custom and Hindu religious marriage ceremony at our home in Sanur. Why now only one day before leaving Bali to give birth to our second child would she acquire an Identity Card claiming to be single?

It dawned slowly...because that was the plan: someday she would divorce me and gain custody of her children by claiming to be unmarried at their birth. This card, the 1994 Balinese ceremony and the 1996 marriage certificate were all part of a planned fraud well underway in 1994.

And the proof was...she had done exactly that.

With that, the fraudulent certification of "Never Married" in Tabanan to obtain the land title to the Kori Restaurant property also became clear. Someday she would claim that property, and the Tulikup property, and all the other properties and businesses in the name of Made Jati—a single woman living in Tabanan or Kuta or Gianyar or whatever—as her properties acquired before her marriage in 1996. Whoever she was, she was NOT the Made Jati who was married and living in Sanur.

Of course someone did recognize a small problem with the plan: the Hindu Sudiwudani and marriage ceremony had taken place in 1994. Some of this had been improvised as good ideas occurred to them, not yet fully mapped out. Not all the necessary documents were in place, and our second child was not yet born. Made filed the Sudiwudani certificates directly in 1994. Then in 1996 she acquired another certificate "Never Married" in Tabanan, and with that and her Resident Identity Card of September 1996, she acquired the 23 September 1996 Certificate of Marriage. Brenden was born in 1994 successfully out of wedlock.

So now from 1996 it was all in place. But there good reasons to delay a divorce because I was designing and building Kori Restaurant in Kuta; it opened in June 1998. I was building out other shops in Kuta and Ubud. In 2001 we acquired the property and began building the Uluwatu shop in Sanur. In 2002 we acquired property along the beach in Kedonganan and I began designing a newer, bigger version of Kori to be named Gedong. Business was growing, assets were growing, there was no point in getting a divorce now.